Bug Description

I had the driver working fine (not great, but usable) on dapper. I used NetworkManager to connect to my unencrypted AP. Today I upgraded to edgy and it stopped working. I choose my AP from NetworkManager and it tries to connect for about a minute, and then stops without getting connected. I expected the driver's situation to improve with the newer kernel, but it seems like this is a regression.

I have these packages installed:
linux-restricted-modules-2.6.17-10-powerpc
linux-restricted-modules-common
linux-restricted-modules-powerpc

I have not tried to connect the network via console, I don't really know how to. If you can point me to instructions I will try that.
Also I suspected bcm43xx module to cause some kernel panics/hangs that I experienced, so I unloaded it and now the system is OK.
I understand there are patches in the bcm43xx mailing list that improve the driver quite a bit.

Indeed the module is correctly autoloaded. There is no problem of scanning for me. I do get results with 'iwlist scan' and also NetworkManager shows some APs. When I choose mine, however, it tries to connect but doesn't succeed.

Something made it work somehow now. It's not the instructions from that page coz I haven't done any changes to /etc/network/interfaces - NetworkManager just succeeded in connecting this time. I will have to try some more to see what exactly is going on. I'll report back...

Well, maybe not related to the original problem, but so far what I found out is when I come back from sleep I eventually find (after trying to connect for a few minutes) the following in dmesg:
[81518.921534] bcm43xx: IRQ_READY timeout

So I unloaded and reloaded the module which then worked.
Also the range of the wireless connectivity is very short - which seems to be taken care of by the patches I mentioned from the mailing list.

I cannot establish anything solid about that. The behavior is extremely unpredictable.
It could work sometimes right away, sometimes I have to try to reconnect several times, sometimes I unload/reload the driver. At sometimes I tried the command
'sudo iwconfig eth0 ap any' which seemed to help, but again not 100% sure...
The thing is that while it could work right away, it could also waste me over one hour of trying to connect, through which many times the system locks up and I have to hard shutdown.
With the suspend it is the same: it could work right away, it could require reloading the module, and it could easily lock up the machine too...
I have no real idea about what to do to fix this, but to maybe see what upstream has done to improve this and sync the driver with theirs.

Okay, so from my use of edgy since the last post it seems 'sudo iwconfig eth0 ap any' almost always makes it work - but then again why should it be run manually?
But the major problem is that very often the machine crashes and I must hard shut down it. This happens once a day or two, and I'm afraid it might harm the machine...

The 18 month support period for Edgy Eft 6.10 has reached its end of life. As a result, we are closing the linux-source-2.6.17 Edgy Eft kernel task. However, development has already began for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. It would be helpful if you could test the upcoming release and verify if this is still an issue - http://www.ubuntu.com/testing . If the issue still exists, please update this report by changing the Status of the "linux" task from "Incomplete" to "New". We appreciate your patience and understanding as we make this transition. Thanks!